Green in the Extreme: Energy Anorexics

The New York Timesprofiles "energy anorexics,” people who obsess over their personal carbon emissions to an unhealthy degree: "To some mental health professionals, the compulsion to live green in the extreme can suggest a kind of disorder."

One profile is of Sharon Astyk, of Knox, N.Y., who won't let her son play little league baseball because of the carbon footprint: “We haven’t been able to find a league that doesn’t involve a long drive,” she said. “I say that it isn’t good for the planet, so we play catch in the yard.”

She has "unplugged the family refrigerator, using it as an icebox during warmer months by putting in frozen jugs of water as the coolant (in colder weather, she stores milk and butter outdoors)", and depends on a wood stove for heat, where the average indoor winter temperature is 52 degrees, so cold that "their four sons often sleep huddled together to pool body heat."